Lessek's Key

BOOK III
The Wolfhound
MALAKASIA

‘Thank you, Alen.’ Hoyt’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Where did you get these?’

Alen gestured as if all of Eldarn were within his reach – yet Hoyt had never known the old man to be anywhere but Middle Fork. ‘Oh, here and there.’

‘But these are vintage – nothing like this has been printed in over nine hundred Twinmoons.’ Hoyt brushed the cover of the top volume in the stack of thirty or more: the most comprehensive collection of medical texts he had ever seen.

‘There are more,’ Alen said.

‘Where?’ Hoyt immediately hated the fact that he sounded so greedy and tried to curb his enthusiasm slightly. ‘Sorry, I mean- thank you so very much for these, Alen. It would have taken me ten Twinmoons or more to steal this collection – I’d love to know where you managed to find them. And if there are others, well, you know I just want to be as thorough as possible in my training-’

‘Please stop apologising,’ Alen said with a smile. ‘There are more, and I want you to have them. They’re doing no one any good where they are. Once you get this bunch stashed away somewhere, I’ll show you a significant private library here in Praga, and another over in Rona.’ He considered his pipe and rapped the bowl against the fireplace to empty it, then stored it in a rack on the mantel. The old man’s dog wandered in from the hallway, nuzzled against Hoyt’s hip until he patted the big animal behind the ears. Satisfied for the moment, it padded over to a rug near the fire to sleep away the morning aven.

Hoyt had dreamed of such books. He had wanted for so long to be a healer – more than that, he wanted to be a doctor. Stitching a wound, setting a bone, even delivering a baby: these skills he had learned during his travels, and he was respected in Southport as a talented healer, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy him. A thousand Twinmoons of Malakasian rule had seen the deterioration of so much in Eldarn – education, public health, welfare, scientific research, and especially medicine. Given the opportunity, Hoyt Navarra of Southport was happy to burden himself with the resurrection of medicine in Eldarn. These books were a good start.

Being found with even one of these publications would mean death; being detained with thirty ancient medical treatises would almost certainly ensure a slow, tortured death: a tag hanging. He would be forced to wear a placard naming him as an illegal smuggler of outlaw writing, and then hanged for an entire Twinmoon until his body rotted. Hoyt had seen tag hangings before; by the end of the Twinmoon, the foul stench of decay was overwhelming. Once he had seen a woman caught with fennaroot; she’d refused to put on the placard so the Malakasian officials had acted swiftly. A soldier nailed the placard to her chest.

Getting Alen’s generous gift home would be challenging, but… ‘I can get these back,’ he said confidently. ‘Thank you, Alen, thank you!’

‘It is my pleasure,’ he smiled. ‘Use them well. Teach others. Make it your goal in life to see this information applied throughout Eldarn, and then update them, Hoyt – it’s been nearly a thousand Twinmoons since anyone has published anything new. Even more important than becoming a doctor: your charge will be to find the right people to add knowledge.’

Hoyt ordered the tenderloin, a first for him in a public house. It was expensive, and a rarity – few people had spare silver to be ordering such elaborate meals from a tavern – but this was a celebration, after all. If anyone tried to roll him, they’d get a bit of a surprise: Hoyt invariably carried a homemade scalpel in easy reach; any would-be assailant would get more than he had bargained for. Still, neither the two elderly gentlemen throwing multi-sided dice, nor the young couple talking over a flagon of wine, nor the small group of men engrossed in some business discussion looked at all interested. He turned his attention to his meal.

He had waited for this day half his life; now Alen had made it a reality. All he had to do was work out how to get this treasure trove back to Southport. That would need some planning.

While he was contemplating options, a young woman approached and, without asking, took a seat across from him.

‘Good evening,’ she said.

Hoyt, both his thoughts and his meal interrupted, was irritated. ‘Not tonight,’ he said shortly as he reached for the wine, and gestured towards the door. ‘Go find someone else.’

The woman, several Twinmoons older than Hoyt, was wearing a simple wool skirt and a light tunic with loose-fitting sleeves. She had a thin leather strap of some sort around her neck. She ignored him and motioned for service.

‘I’ll have the same,’ she told the barman, ‘and another flagon of that too, please.’

Hoyt reached for his goblet again, and said, ‘I’m sorry, maybe you didn’t hear me. I’m not interested. And I am not buying you dinner.’

She tossed a leather pouch onto the table which jangled with the unmistakable sound of Mareks – a bold move, showing off that much money. Despite the fact that no one appeared to have noticed, Hoyt was uncomfortable with such a public demonstration of wealth.

‘I’m not a prostitute; so relax,’ she said softly. ‘I can pay my own way. I was just looking for someone interesting with whom to have dinner.’

Hoyt raised an eyebrow. She was straightforward; he appreciated that quality, and as he sneaked a longer look he realised that she was not unattractive. Her curly hair was closely cropped, her eyes were large and wide-set over a narrow nose. Her face was scarred – beneath one eye, across her chin, and through the gentle incline of her upper lip; Hoyt found that curiously endearing: the perfect women who cavorted with Malagon’s generals or lived in his palaces could learn something from a woman like this. Maybe this woman’s scars came from a rough-and-tumble childhood; maybe from her more recent past – either way, she had captured his attention.

He pushed his chair back and turned to order more wine for himself, and as he did so he caught sight of her tanned deerhide boots rising halfway up her calves, the soft double-wrapped type popular with those who spent much of their time on their feet. In one was stashed a bone-handled knife, sheathed in an inside flap for quick access, not the type of blade one used to slice bread or cut meat from a spit.

Hoyt smiled. His attractive dinner companion smiled back. Her teeth were straight and clean; she had obviously grown up in a privileged community, probably somewhere in Malakasia. ‘So no chance I can get you to leave?’ he said, this time bantering.

‘Oh no, not now I’ve just ordered dinner. That looks delicious. How is it?’

‘One of the best tenderloins I’ve eaten in Middle Fork.’ This was the first time Hoyt had ever tasted it, anywhere in Eldarn – but it was undeniably delicious.

‘Are you celebrating something?’

He shook his head. ‘No. I just enjoy good food. It’s my one vice.’

She laughed, and to his surprise, Hoyt found he desperately wanted to hear it again.

‘Do you want to know what my vices are?’ she asked.

His hand started to shake. ‘No-’

‘Why not?’ Her seductive manner was difficult to resist; Hoyt moved his hand to keep it from rattling the plates. He enjoyed the charade of being a wealthy man, and he hoped she was enjoying her role as the temptress, but it hadn’t taken him long to know who she really was.

‘Because I am too busy tonight to spend time on silly pursuits.’

‘Since when is love silly?’

‘Since the very first time it was mistaken as love by someone – probably a man – in the throes of lust.’ His hand had stopped trembling now and he deliberately picked up his fork and speared a piece of meat, then popped it into his mouth and savoured the taste.

‘What a negative outlook on human emotion.’ She reached across the table and took his hand, and in spite of himself he felt his heart race. Perhaps there was something to be said for a full-blown case of raging lust. She toyed with his fingers, almost absentmindedly. ‘You need a strong woman to take you to heights of pleasure you will remember for the rest of your life.’

‘Ah, now I understand.’ He withdrew his hand. A half-aven of pleasure followed by two hundred Twinmoons of wishing I could recapture it, even once. Forgive me, but that doesn’t sound like a terribly appetising offer.’

Her food arrived, and as she sorted out coins from her purse, the barman tried to steal a clear look down her tunic.

A withering glare from Hoyt sent him on his way. ‘You ought to close that up. People kill for that much silver.’

‘I’ll be all right.’ She slipped it back inside her tunic. ‘You realise my offer doesn’t have to be just one night.’ As much as Hoyt wanted to feel the woman’s fingers entwined with his again, he kept his hands busy with his cutlery.

‘Ah, but it would be, wouldn’t it?’

‘What makes you say that?’ Her voice had dropped again and Hoyt felt it resonate in his bones, stirring him from within. He wanted to clear the table and take her right there, in the tavern – but that was what she wanted him to feel; she had been manipulating him from the start. His body responded to his desire, playing into her hands.

Hoyt smiled, it had been a thoroughly enjoyable game – and now he had to end it.

He leaned in close to her, enjoying the triumphant smile that crossed her lips. ‘Because, my dear, you are a thief,’ he whispered, enjoying even more the sudden change of expression. ‘Your entire persona screams I am a thief, louder than if you were standing on top of this building, screaming it out to all of Middle Fork. You have a knife tucked into a hidden sheath in your boots, which in turn are tough but more importantly, silent. You’re wearing a tight-fitting skirt, but I would guess your loose-fitting tunic has sleeves filled with all sorts of nasty sticking and stabbing devices. Your hair is short – quite attractive, I would add – but short enough to stay out of your way when you’ve tucked it beneath a hood or a mask. You have exceedingly strong hands and fingers, a quick wit, and three scars on your face that I very much doubt came from playing chainball with your older brothers. You are obviously not a prostitute, and obviously not a businesswoman, but you’re carrying enough silver to buy much of Middle Fork.

‘So unless you’re a Malakasian general’s wife holidaying in the southern territories, amusing yourself with a bit of local colour, you’re a thief. Probably quite a good one.’

A brief look of horror passed over her face, replaced almost immediately by a look of fear. ‘Who are you?’ she whispered, unobtrusively sliding one hand beneath the table.

Hoyt liked her other voice much better. ‘I am the one who is going to break that hand if you don’t keep it up here where I can see it.’

She complied, and he added, ‘Good. Thanks. You should have listened when I asked you to go away, but I guess I was about the only target here – and I did enjoy the seduction routine; you’re very good at it.’

‘Pissing demons,’ she said, staring at him. Without looking down, she stabbed a piece of meat and bit it off the blade, then chewed slowly. ‘You’re a thief,’ she said finally.

‘Nice to meet you. I’m Hoyt. I’m from Southport.’

Knowing she had been bested, at least on this occasion, she smiled. ‘I’m Ramella. I’m from Landry.’

‘A pleasure, Ramella of Landry.’ Hoyt offered to pour her a goblet of wine, but she took the flagon from him and helped herself.

‘You must have done well today.’ She gestured towards the meal.

‘Ramella,’ Hoyt decided to take the risk, ‘I have had one of the most glorious days of my life, and I will be completely honest with you, I don’t have a heavy purse, but I do have enough for this meal, and a bit left for my room upstairs. If you actually meant what you said, I would be very happy to take you up on your offer – we have, after all, moved beyond that awkward “getting to know you” phase, so why not?’

Ramella leaned back in the chair, sipping her wine and fiddled with the leather thong tied loosely about her neck. Nothing dangled from it, no charms, jewellery or icons; it was just a leather tie, but Hoyt couldn’t take his eyes off the way the leather strip caressed the soft skin above her tunic.

Smiling her seductive grin, Ramella leaned forward, and gestured for him to do likewise. As he did so, Hoyt could feel her breath on his cheeks, could smell the heady aroma of wine and venison. He held his breath, not wanting to cloud the air with anything but her scent. He waited, expecting her to kiss him and praying she wasn’t about to knife him beneath the table.

When she spoke, he was confused – her words were nowhere in the long list of possible replies to his invitation.

Ramella of Landry leaned across the table, breathing pungent fumes into Hoyt’s face, and said, ‘I think he’s coming out of it.’

‘I think he’s coming out of it,’ Hannah repeated, working some of the stiffness from her shoulder. The querlis had helped – Hoyt rewrapped it each morning with a new poultice – but her arm remained immobile. She felt stronger, though, and was desperate to try going without her shoulder wrapped or her arm in a sling.

‘Yes, you’re right,’ Alen said, ‘and it worked blazingly fast. Great rutting lords, but this is a remarkable substance.’

Hoyt blinked to clear his eyes. Instead of a beautiful thief, Alen and Hannah were staring back at him. Hannah’s shoulder was wrapped, and he recognised his handiwork. Cold, confused, and utterly surprised to find them here, outside, he asked, ‘Where’s Ramella?’

Alen laughed. ‘I’d like to know that, too, Hoyt. You never mentioned her before. She sounded quite intoxicating.’

Hoyt thought his head might crack open. ‘Is she here? Where are we?’

Hannah sat beside him. ‘We’re in Malakasia, north of the Great Pragan Range and moving towards Welstar Palace. Do you remember any of that?’ There was a concerned look in her eyes.

In a rush, everything came back to him: their journey, the forest of ghosts, the pouch of bark Churn had found on the Malakasian corpse – and his crazy decision to test it out. As his memories washed over him in a wave, he started to tremble. Hannah put her good arm around him, and he revelled in the warmth of her touch.

‘Unholy whores, but that was real!’ he cried. ‘I was there, Alen, there in your house. It was like yesterday – there were details I would never be able to remember now, not even on my best day with my clearest recollections. I saw it all: your house, the fireplace off that little room you called your study, the one with the green and brown rug on the floor – I haven’t seen that rug in a hundred Twinmoons, but I could weave it for you, today, without missing a detail. I don’t remember you smoking, though, or having a dog, but the rest of it was so real.’ He paused, shaking his head as if to clear it.

‘It was the day you gave me the first books in my collection. I never told you what happened afterwards, but I left your place that night and I met a woman. She was a thief, and gods, but I was in love with her.’

‘Sounded more like lust from where we were sitting,’ Hannah said.

‘Call it what you like,’ Hoyt chuckled, ‘but she was the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen. I asked her to stay with me that night. I couldn’t help it; my whole head was caving in just looking at her. I couldn’t-’ He paused, considered his rambling storyline and ended with, ‘I don’t suppose you need all those details, do you?’

‘We need a few,’ Alen said. ‘I don’t recall smoking, and I have never had a dog.’

Several tumblers clicked into place in Hoyt’s mind. ‘The dog. Hannah, you remembered a dog, too, both when you came through the forest of ghosts, and again when I set the bone in your shoulder. Isn’t that right?’

She nodded. ‘It was more than remembering him. When I was in the forest, it was as if reality had changed. I was there with my parents, and the dog was there too – that dog was there at my parent’s house in Denver, but we never had a dog. I spent a long time wondering which were my real memories.’

‘How very odd.’ Hoyt shook the last of the fog from his mind. ‘What do you think, Alen? Is it just some strange effect of the narcotics in this bark?’

‘It must be,’ Alen said. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s clear that we all experienced the most memorable times in our lives, and whether they were a highest high – collecting that medical library in Middle Fork – or a lowest low, like Churn’s family massacre or my leaving Reia in England, the memories are as vivid as any dream we’ve ever experienced. And they’re repetitive and very real – and captivating, in that none of us have been able to escape them without some outside intervention.’

‘What happened to me?’

‘You were out all day, so we cut the strip holding the piece of bark around your neck. It wasn’t long after we took it off that you started to come back to us.’ Hannah held up the thong on which Alen had carefully affixed a piece of the bark.

‘A leather strip,’ Hoyt said under his breath. ‘That’s another detail.’

‘What?’ Hannah asked.

‘It’s nothing, but Alen is right, some of the details are things we seem to be adding. The dog is one. I don’t know why you added it to your memories, and I can only guess that I added it because you mentioned it after your last episode, so you must have put the idea in my head. The dog appeared in my memory as an added bonus, just like this leather strip: I knew you had attached the bark to my neck with it, and as a result it appeared in my memory as an exceedingly seductive piece of jewellery Ramella was wearing the night we met. But I can’t remember if she really was wearing a leather thong around her neck the night we met.’

‘She probably wasn’t,’ Hannah said. ‘I am convinced we had a dog at the house in Denver, but I know we never did.’

Hoyt turned to Alen. ‘Well, let’s document that as a side-effect.’

‘Added details and embellished memories?’

‘Ramella’s breasts didn’t get bigger, if that’s what you mean, but yes, the dog and the leather thong both seem very real to me now – yet I know you never had a dog when I used to visit in those days.’

‘Right, and I didn’t smoke, either.’

‘There’s that, too. The dog sort of makes sense, in an odd, shared way between me and Hannah, but the smoking? I can’t figure it.’

‘I don’t know either, but we have learned a few things. We’ve discovered that the bark appears to work on everyone – you went under in moments, even though you were unaffected by the forest.’ Alen was trying to tally a mental list before any elusive details escaped him. ‘That’s why you volunteered, because we already knew it would work on the rest of us. You looked as though you’d go on reliving that one day over and over again for the rest of your life if we didn’t cut the strip from around your throat. And like Hannah, you added details to your memories. Neither Churn nor I can recall adding anything to ours.’ Alen looked to the big man, who nodded in agreement.

Alen went on, ‘You were under its spell all day, like we were, but you were able to communicate with us – at least to hear us.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Look,’ Alen said, and stepped aside to reveal a stack of firewood, enough logs to keep a significant blaze going for several days.

Hoyt didn’t understand; he signed to Churn, ‘Pissing demons, did you think we were going to stay here all Twinmoon?’

Churn smirked and signed, ‘You did it.’

‘I did this?’ Hoyt walked over to the pile and took a log from the top. He looked at it uncomprehendingly, then dropped it into the fire, as if to confirm that the stack was real. ‘How did I do this if I was back there all day?’ Hoyt gestured into the past as if it existed somewhere on the other side of their camp.

Churn went on, Alen asked you to get some firewood. You did.’

‘But- This can’t be. Alen, I was there with you. It was a conversation we had for maybe half an aven. We ate, then I left to steal a wheelbarrow. It took an aven, start to finish, if that.’

Alen crossed to his friend. ‘You collected firewood for nearly four avens today, Hoyt. One of us was always with you, but you worked nonstop until we made you sit down and cut away the bark.’

‘But I don’t feel tired,’ he protested. ‘Look at how much wood there is: I’d be flat on my back if I worked that hard! And look at the size of those logs – I could barely lift one of those on my own, never mind pile them up like that!’

‘That’s another interesting detail we need to consider as we analyse this bark and examine the forest of ghosts more closely – I think I’ve an idea of why Nerak wants so much. Imagine what he could make the people of Malakasia do… Hoyt, we hung this around your neck and the bark took you – it was quick and painless, and you were gone. I protected my fingers as I fixed this piece to your throat, Hoyt, and it barely touched your flesh all day, but you didn’t break from your memories for four avens and you worked steadily the whole time. Imagine what might happen if Nerak uses this on his army, or his servants – and what if he gives it to them internally, what might happen then?’

‘But I’m not tired,’ Hoyt repeated, still unwilling to believe the evidence.

‘Still,’ Hannah said, ‘we should take rooms in the next town. We don’t know what might happen once he starts travelling again. He might pass out or fall asleep. We should be someplace warm and safe tonight.’

‘I agree,’ Alen said and began packing up.

‘Alen, are you suggesting that Nerak would be able to make these effects permanent?’

‘I shudder to think that, but yes, he might. Imagine the workforce he would have-’

‘But would Hoyt have been able to make us do things when we went through the forest of ghosts? Gather firewood or build mortar outhouses or sack Sparta?’

‘I had trouble getting you to walk most of the time,’ Hoyt agreed.

Alen looked up from the saddle bags. ‘That is precisely why I believe Nerak wants the bark. He can refine it, or do something to control it, I’d bet my bones on that.’

‘But he already has the occupation army, the taxes and tariffs – what more could he squeeze out of Eldarn that he would need a village full of hysterical, screaming, babbling slaves?’ Hoyt still wasn’t convinced.

Alen frowned. Was it obvious only to him? ‘Nerak wants what Nerak has always wanted, my friends: supreme power, power and control over everything. He wants life and death in his hands. He wants to reign like a god over all he can see and all he can imagine. There is an awesome evil waiting out there for Nerak to open the door and when it arrives, it will bring down death and devastation, and Nerak will finally have what he wants. He will have brought about the end of all things.’ And he wants Pikan. But he cannot have her, not any more.

‘Nerak can use this bark to control the minds of the living, and he can revel in our suffering while he works to bring about the end of us all. So to answer your question: Nerak would want this because no one else in Eldarn would be hideous enough to ensnare who knows how many in the worst nightmare of their lives while they toil away at whatever reprehensible task he has dreamed up, either just for his own enjoyment, or, worse, for the eventual destruction of all we know.’

Alen kicked out their campfire. ‘We will see things between here and Welstar Palace, even inside Welstar Palace, that will stay with us for the rest of our lives, and whatever it is he is using this bark for will be one of those horrors. You can bet on it, my friends.’

Hoyt swallowed hard. ‘Now I’m feeling a bit tired.’

‘You and me both,’ Hannah said.

Alen smiled and tucked the pouch back inside his cloak. ‘Then let’s get ourselves to a nice warm inn. We’ll go wild and get comfortable beds with down pillows and soft wool blankets.’

‘And venison, with gravy – tenderloin,’ Hoyt added in a burst of enthusiasm.

‘Expensive choice, Hoyt, but you’ve had a hard day gathering firewood.’ Alen considered the immense pile of sticks and branches. ‘Venison all round then.’

That night, Hoyt fell asleep earlier than usual, though he really hadn’t suffered from any overwhelming feeling of fatigue. Churn followed his friend a short time later, carrying a flagon of wine as an aid to sleep; Hannah heard the wooden steps groan and creak in protest as the big man passed.

Alen reached for the remaining wine and started to refill Hannah’s goblet when she stopped him, protesting, ‘No thanks, Alen, I’m already getting dizzy. I’ll have some of the water, please.’

‘As you like.’ He complied, pouring from the stoneware pitcher beside Hoyt’s empty trencher. ‘But I don’t recommend the water – it’s a boring vintage, horribly similar to last year’s.’

Hannah chuckled at the reference to her world. ‘How many trips did you make across the Fold?’

‘Too many to count,’ he answered. ‘I learned so many languages on my journeys back and forth that they started to become confused in my head, all those tenses and cases jumbling together. Do you know how many ways there are to make reference to pasta in Italian?’

‘No.’ She grinned at the thought.

‘No one does, but there have to be hundreds, maybe thousands. All that oni, illi, elli, I just want it in a bowl, gods, is that too much to ask?’ He slapped the table with one hand, a little drunk himself, the first time Hannah had seen Alen like this since they had left Praga. He drank, and held the goblet against his chest as he sat back in his chair. ‘Yes, there were many wonderful journeys.’

‘Yet I see so little of our world here. Why is that?’

Alen sat forward, the long-ago lost teacher in him coming into hazy focus for a moment. ‘Oh, there used to be much more, but we have let it all fade, or we’ve forgotten how to do things properly. It’s remarkable how quickly an advanced society on the edge of greatness can disintegrate when people don’t have what they need to survive. The whole world’s focus changes, turns inwards, and progress grinds to a halt. Back then, it was industrial-age technology, that’s what we were after at the time: printing, education, public health, medicine… We had made such progress here, and our own scientists and researchers were finding ways to enrich our efforts with the magic inherent in this land. But those days, the exciting news was the industrial boom. Gods, but I would have given anything to figure out how to bring back a blast furnace.’

‘Why not just build one here?’

‘We would have, if Nerak hadn’t ruined everything. Do you know that there were metal ships in your world at the time? Imagine a navy with metal ships…’

‘I don’t have to imagine it, Alen,’ Hannah said, reaching for the water pitcher again, ‘I’ve seen it all, and you’re right: a fleet of wooden ships would be sunk in less than half an aven. The fight would be over before our modern ships had appeared over the horizon.’

Alen was hanging on her every word. ‘So it remains a wondrous place then?’

‘We have some way to go still, but all things considered, it is a remarkable place, yes. Mind you, there are drawbacks, and we’ve got our oddities too: we have to print warnings on coffee cups saying the drink’s hot! Can you imagine anything that absurd?’

Alen, a little taken aback, asked, ‘Is your coffee not served hot any more? I remember it being quite delicious that way. Tea also.’

‘Like I said,’ Hannah dismissed it with a wave of her hand, ‘some oddities and a few drawbacks.’

‘Regardless, I would love to see it again. One more trip.’ He stacked his plate neatly on top of Hoyt’s, then added Churn’s.

‘You can,’ Hannah said. ‘You should all come back with me. You’ve said yourself, time and again, that there’s nothing left for you here. Your family is gone. Why stay just to die? Is it because of Lessek? Is it really his intention that you live this long, in solitude, then just march into Welstar Palace and die?’

‘No, I’m sure there’s more, and I’m sure it has something to do with you. But after that’s done, I will rest.’

Hannah changed the subject. ‘Tell me about Nerak.’

‘Why? I was having a nice time.’ Alen glanced towards the door as three soldiers entered the tavern. They looked as if they were off duty for the evening. The former Larion Senator scowled at them. ‘Grand. And now we add these scum to the evening. This place is falling apart around us, Hannah. We should flee into the night, or at least until we find a different tavern.’

‘Right here will be fine, Alen, and as for that crew, just ignore them. All we’re doing is having a late dinner and a few drinks.’ She filled a goblet with water and pushed it across to the old man; having him falling-down drunk wouldn’t do now, not with Malakasians in the room. She would have been happy to ignore one night of revelry, but if he began making disparaging comments now, it could mean the imprisonment and torture of them both. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘have some of this.’

Alen shrugged. He was too tired to argue with her. Gripping both goblets, he asked, ‘Now, what were we talking about?’

Hannah raised a finger as if to say, wait one moment. The soldiers were heading for the bar and she wanted to listen to their conversation as they passed. She couldn’t glean much, just a few snippets. She still wasn’t familiar with the curious lilt of the Malakasian dialect; she’d never be able to fool anyone into believing she was a native.

Was in Orindale Harbour, but I hear it sank, she heard.

Not seen him in a Moon at least.

Rutter may have gone down with the ship.

Already breaking up. Whole brigades moving out of Orindale, rutting Seron, too.

Generals don’t know whether to shit or scratch.

Glad we’re not them, eh?

Right. What’s drinking?

Across the table, Alen waited, folding and refolding a cloth napkin repeatedly as the soldiers passed, determined not to make eye contact with them. Hannah immediately felt better; perhaps he wasn’t as drunk as he’d appeared.

‘Well, that was interesting,’ she said quietly, once they were out of earshot.

‘Not now,’ Alen cautioned, even more quietly. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’

She went back to her previous question. ‘Why don’t you want to talk about Nerak?’

‘Because he is a mean, reprehensible, smelly old fart, and he always has been.’ Alen grinned. Hannah imagined he must have been quite attractive an eternity ago, when he was young.

‘Come on,’ she urged, ‘you two worked together, lived together, built the Larion Senate together… at least tell me about those days, before everything began to unravel.’

Alen shifted in his curious way, adjusting himself and then coming to rest exactly where he had been before. ‘I suppose there were good Twinmoons, but things began to come apart over a very long period of time. There were grim shadows of our future quite early in our time together at Sandcliff; there was a darkness to Nerak from the beginning. Sometimes the pall over him was so thick you felt as though you could peel it off and paste it on a wall if you could get close enough to him.’

‘He was frightening?’

‘No, not at first. In the beginning, he was contagiously enthusiastic, driven unlike any of us. But his lust for power and knowledge coupled with his desire for Pikan drove him mad.’

‘All over a woman?’ Hannah looked askance at him. ‘I find it hard to believe Nerak would allow everything to come apart over the love of one woman.’

‘He didn’t allow everything to come apart. Instead, he pushed too far too quickly. He was well on his way to becoming the greatest sorcerer since Lessek, Lessek’s heir apparent, but he was prone to bouts of anger – well, rage really. He pressed himself too hard, delved too deeply into the spell table. In the end, it consumed him. Would he have done it if Pikan had loved him instead of me? Eventually, yes, I think so – but I also believe he was taken by something hideous because he was in there too frequently and too early in his development as a sorcerer. If Pikan had loved him, he might have made different decisions.’

‘She must have been quite a woman.’

‘She was. Since her death, I’ve lived almost a thousand Twinmoons sequestered in the same house in the same town, never venturing further than it took to buy greenroot, potatoes and pepper weed. I’d say she was quite something.’

Hannah checked the soldiers at the bar were still engrossed in their beers and said, ‘But she didn’t choose him, Alen, she chose you, and that was entirely her choice to make. And no matter how many ways you pick it apart, or how long you hide in the basement blaming yourself, Nerak’s fall from grace was his own doing.’

‘Oh, I don’t disagree with you; it’s just that he had so much to offer. It’s really quite-’

‘Tragic.’

‘Tragic, yes.’

‘Did you never have times when you collaborated and succeeded in reaching the Senate’s common goals?’

‘Absolutely,’ Alen said, ‘many times, especially in the beginning. That may be why we all stayed so long, despite the darkness hidden in Nerak. We were teachers and leaders, but we were magicians, and even though magic was much more common in Eldarn than in Denver, it was not always easy for us to find a niche in Eldarni society. Before the Larion Senate, if you were a magician, you became a healer, an entertainer, sometimes an artist, but never a teacher. It took a long time for people to feel comfortable knowing their children were working with sorcerers.’

‘But your early successes changed some of that?’

‘That’s what made it so special. All over Eldarn people wanted their children to come to Sandcliff to study at the university; we even had waiting lists. Pikan, Nerak and I often travelled together to find those who showed more potential.’

Hannah, caught up in the old man’s tale, poured herself more wine. ‘So students had varying degrees of skill?’

‘Oh yes, we’d get urgent messages from parents convinced their little one was Eldarn’s next Lessek – mostly when some child managed to wilt the flowers on the mantel, or perhaps rolled a few beans around a trencher. We made trips to find the strong ones, the children who blew their grandfather’s barn down with a breath, who lit the dog on fire with a thought, or who lured all the region’s fireflies into the house for reading light.’

Hannah mimicked the mothers she knew: ‘My kid’s gifted. No, my kid’s gifted. Your kid? Stop it. My kid’s gifted.’ She laughed. ‘Is that where you were going when you had the fight?’

The old man’s mood darkened; Hannah was sorry she had asked the question. ‘No. That trip, we were heading for Larion Isle, where we went to work new spells and to document those that were successful. And to protect the rest of Eldarn from those that… well, weren’t successful. No sense holding back now, eh? That trip was the beginning of the end. I know I said that there had been something dark about Nerak, but that was when we should have realised that the Larion Senate was doomed as long as Nerak had access to Lessek’s key.’

‘I thought the fight was over Pikan,’ Hannah said.

‘It was. The initial confrontation was two lovesick fools fighting over a woman. Can you believe it? And he could have killed me. I know he wanted to, but his love for her stopped him, I’m sure of it. Nerak knew she would have been crushed if he had killed me, so I came out of it with a nasty ankle injury and a sorely bruised sense of my own abilities as a sorcerer. It ruined the trip to Larion Isle. I’d always enjoyed those journeys, because Pikan and Nerak led the magicians and I went just as a researcher – and because it was a great boat trip.’ He finished the wine and started in on the water. ‘This tastes dreadful. Do you want some tecan?’

‘I’d love some, sure. Do we have enough money? I know it’s a bad time to ask now that we’ve eaten the most expensive meal in the place, but how are we holding up?’

‘I haven’t been out in nearly a thousand Twinmoons, Hannah.’ He gestured for the barman. ‘We have plenty.’

‘Good. Then, yes, please. It will help clear my head.’

‘So where was I? Oh, yes, the fight: I hurt my ankle and lied to everyone that I did it getting off the ship. He wasn’t telling anyone the truth, so I let it go as well, but he began to pick at me. First, he insisted on climbing the highest mountains on the island just to run the tests. Pikan always went along, because someone had to keep the records. That would have been my role, but I couldn’t get there. Then there were the walking sticks I cut. I must have cut myself five or six, and most of them were burned when it was his turn to set the campfire. He knew they were my crutches, but he cut them up and tossed them in the flames just to be irritating. Some mornings I would wake to find my sticks on the other side of my room, or out in the common room.’

‘That sounds awfully childish, Alen, especially for someone who took himself so seriously.’

‘Love makes fools of us all, Hannah. If you haven’t discovered that, yet, be patient; you will.’

Hannah thought back to her drive up the canyon from Denver to Idaho Springs to look for Steven. Part of her had gone to confront him; if he wanted their relationship to end, he needed to say so. She supposed a part of her had gone because she was genuinely worried something might have happened to him or to Mark, but Hannah knew in her heart that she had driven up the canyon, broken into the house and fallen victim to the ugly rug because she had been falling in love with Steven Taylor. And she had not wanted to be the only one – if her heart was going to break, Hannah wanted it to be on her terms, not at 4.30 a.m. along some freezing cold trail beneath Decatur Peak. ‘Perhaps I have already,’ she murmured.

She turned the conversation back to Larion Isle. ‘Was the trip a bust because you two were fighting, or did you get what you needed while you were out there?’

Alen’s brow furrowed. ‘I have been asking myself that question on and off for the past thousand Twinmoons, and I have to say honestly that I don’t know. We wrote the Windscrolls on that trip. Pikan called them that because it had been so rutting windy the entire time we were out there. How anything ever grew on that island was a mystery to me. Anyway, the Windscrolls: there were at least three, spells for protection, deception, destruction, culling minerals from the land, cleansing contaminated water, numbing the body during medical procedures – even killing viral and bacterial infections in people and livestock. The big spells were the first few on the First Windscroll: common-phrase spells for deception, destruction, mining, farming, mass production of goods from raw materials, grand spells we hoped would have a sweeping impact on Eldarn.’

‘Destruction? Deception? And you wanted these to have a worldwide impact?’ Hannah was incredulous. Alen could read it in her face.

‘Clear cutting land for lumber or blasting through bedrock to get at rich veins of ore, that sort of destruction. I suppose you might say they were spells that helped us control the devastation inherent in powerful magic.’

‘And deception?’

‘Similar in a sense to destruction; magic has an enormous capacity to change the way we perceive things. Think about the dog in your parents’ home. You’re convinced that dog was real, but you know the dog was not there. You were deceived by magic. We wrote spells to control that deceptive ability; it helped us continue to work spells in the table without waking the next day believing we were all dancers or professional bellamir players.’ That was the best explanation he could give for the moment.

The tecan arrived and they paused to pour out and sip from the steaming mugs. Hannah inhaled deeply, then asked, ‘So what happened then?’

‘You know the rest. We brought the Windscrolls back to Sandcliff and left for England. There was a common-phrase spell for cleansing contaminated water that Pikan was particularly interested in, so she and I made the research trip to Durham, to study how they handled waste and waste-water. She carried Reia to term, and I did all the work. When we returned, everything was crumbling in Gorsk, and we swore we would get back to England, even if it meant confronting Nerak and perhaps losing one of us in the process.’

‘But you never had the chance?’

‘I had to go to Middle Fork. It was a short assignment. I ended up staying there for most of my life.’ He stared across the table at her, still suffering the anguish of a decision made almost a century and a half earlier.

‘Would you like some more?’ Hannah said, offering the tecan jug, hoping to stop the old man breaking apart. She changed the subject. ‘Do you suppose my friends are alive?’

‘Steven and-’

‘Mark. Mark Jenkins and Steven Taylor. I’m certain they came across the Fold together sometime during the day before I landed in Southport.’

Alen shook his head. ‘I cannot begin to say, Hannah. I’m sorry.’

Her efforts to distract him were failing. He was lost in England, reliving the worst decision of his life, without the help of any enchanted bark or the forest of ghosts.

She tried again. ‘Have you given any more thought to why Nerak might want so much of that bark?’ She tried to be as upbeat as she could.

‘You don’t need to do this, Hannah.’ Alen cut her short. ‘I have lived with this for a long time, long before you were born, and I will live with it for the time I have left. Ignoring or forgetting it would mitigate everything that my life has become. I want those memories clear when this all spins itself out.’

Hannah nodded.

‘When we get near Welstar Palace, I will try to contact Fantus. I hope it was he who opened the doors at Sandcliff.’

‘Yes, I remember,’ she said. ‘If it was him, we live. If it was Nerak, we die.’

‘You don’t cloud the air with a lot of unnecessary details; that’s an admirable trait. And yes, if Fantus is at Sandcliff, and if we are exceedingly lucky, he may know something of your friends.’

‘I appreciate you asking him, but why contact him in the first place?’ Hannah asked.

‘He has been out and about these past Twinmoons; I felt him working spells, before I lost much of my ability to feel anything at all. Perhaps he knows something of Welstar Palace.’ Alen rose to pay their bill. ‘Good night, Hannah.’

‘Good night,’ she said, worrying that he might succumb to his grief, his alcohol poisoning or his guilt and die before dawn. The wooden stairs were silent as he passed.

Hannah suddenly felt as lost and alone as she had felt since her arrival. The three Malakasian soldiers drinking at the bar were a stark reminder of the dangers that had found her so soon after her arrival in Southport. Turning quickly, she took the rest of the tecan and a mug and followed Alen upstairs.